Hexagram 17, Following

This is the hexagram of knowing when to let someone else lead, and choosing well who that is.

The figure

Thunder sits in the lower place and Lake sits above it. Thunder is the eldest son, movement and arousing, the first crack of energy that gets things going. Lake is the youngest daughter, joyous and open, water lying still with its surface to the sky.

Put them together and you have thunder resting inside a lake. All that power is willing to be held, and the lake is glad to hold it. Nothing is forced. The strong thing has agreed to be contained, and the open thing has agreed to give it shape.

That is the whole teaching of Following in one picture. Strength that chooses to be led is a different animal from strength that has been beaten.

Following is paired with Hexagram 18, Work on the Decayed, and the two sit together in the sequence as the easy flow and the hard repair.

When it comes up in a reading

When Following comes up for a question I take it as a nudge to stop pushing. Something in the situation already has a direction, and the question is whether you can let it carry you. Someone else may have the better plan. The timing may belong to events and not to you. The job right now is to adapt, and to adapt with a good heart, since grudging compliance is a poor substitute for following.

The second thing I look at is who or what you are being asked to follow. The hexagram says follow rightly, and the word rightly carries the whole weight. A leader worth your support, a current worth riding, a tradition worth learning before you try to improve it. If you cannot name what you are following, that is the question to answer before you take another step.

There is relief in this hexagram if you let there be. Not every moment needs you at the front. Some of the best work anyone does is done standing beside someone else who has the vision while they make the thing happen. Following well is a skill, and the people who have it are rarer than the people who want to lead.

So I would ask: where are you resisting a direction that is already set, and is the resistance wisdom or is it pride? If it is wisdom, say so plainly and step away. If it is pride, loosen your grip and see how far the current takes you.

As a birth hexagram

If this is your birth hexagram, or if it keeps coming back to you in casts, you are someone who knows how to follow well. You recognise good leadership when you see it and you give it your full weight. You adapt when circumstances change where other people dig in. Once you have chosen a cause or a person, you stay. You are loyal in a way that is becoming rare.

The gift of this is that you make other people's leadership work. Every visible leader stands on a few people like you, the trusted deputy, the partner who turns the idea into something real. Without you the leader is just someone talking. You also give permission, by your example, to the people who were pushed into pretending to lead when their real gift was for support. Following is a legitimate way to live, and you prove it.

The shadow is the obvious one. Following without judgement has carried good people into bad places. The charming fraud, the leader who turns, the movement that promised everything. Your wellbeing rises and falls with what you are attached to, so the choosing matters more for you than for most. The other shadow is quieter: there are moments when the lead was yours to take, and you let the habit of following decide for you.

At maturity, the person who carries Following has backed worthy people and causes for a lifetime and has grown skilled through all of it. In my experience these are the people others end up following in the end, without anyone quite deciding it. The old deputy becomes the one the room turns to.

If a line moves

When a line moves in Following, the bottom two lines speak to the beginning of the matter, the first choice about whom or what to follow. The middle lines are its heart, the attachment itself and what it costs or gives. The top lines are its end, where following has either done its work or gone too far into blind loyalty. The changed line gives the second hexagram, which is the direction the situation is heading, and the How to Cast a Hexagram page shows you how to find it.

Across the traditions

The Eight Trigrams page describes Lake and Thunder and the family the eight belong to. The Chinese Astrology section covers yin and yang, the same two forces the lines are built from. In my own tarot work I place Following beside The Hierophant, the card of learning a tradition properly before you change it, though that is my association and nothing older than me.

Who or what are you following right now, and would you choose it again today?

If you would like this read against your own chart, my readings are here.